Air travel has reached a new level on my ordeal meter

Air travel has reached a new level on my ordeal meter. Even Southwest airlines, an expert at herding humans and making you feel like its OK if we are having fun, is becoming a “high ordeal” event.

Rising gas prices have robbed me of the pleasure of cruising I-10 between Ozona and Iraan cut off. Zipping along at 70 mph and still being 10 mph under the posted speed limit where occasionally a truck or car passes you rocking your pick up with their sonic boom wake.

So I decided to fly. I can fly to Midland for about two thirds of what the gas would cost to drive my 16 mpg pickup, and that includes a car rental. But the trade off is the ordeal of flying and the limited amount of junk you can bring with you.

At the Midland/Odessa departure gate at Hobby Airport (HOU)in Houston I always scan the crowd of travelers looking for a familiar face, but I never see one. Although I was born and raised in Odessa I only lived there until I was 25, that means that I have not lived there more years than I lived there. (Does that make sense?)

Sunday, 6:00 AM at MAF, that’s the FAA designation for the Midland International Airport. You know the airport you are in is not busy when you can hear the “Muzak” and clearly understand the pre recorded announcements. “The terrorist level set by Home Land security is Orange” other than the massive oil reserves in the area its hard to fathom a terrorist threat in the this place. “MAF” is a very nice airport, and airport that is not too busy with masses of people should be a clean airport and this on is. But I have yet to figure out how the get on the there very strong Wi-Fi signal. I guess I don’t have the correct decoder ring. I’ll have to write Battle Creek and get a new one.

Sunday 8:30 AM at AUS, that Austin-Bergstrom International, I arrived from MAF and just realized I was going to spend about 3 hours at the Austin. At least the Wi-Fi worked.